


Dreams of Wolves

by Hecate



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-15
Updated: 2012-12-15
Packaged: 2017-11-21 05:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/593958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is throwing herself into a pose and life is following her example.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreams of Wolves

**Author's Note:**

> Don't archive/translate without asking. Not mine, no money made. Based on fictional characters.

When Stefan leaves, taking coffins and the last memory of his touch with him, Elena turns to Damon with a tired smile. She tells him that he has to be the one waiting for Stefan because she won't, not anymore, because her life is a countdown and not a clock stuck hours before midnight. He nods.

She wonders if he knows that she's lying. The clock is ticking but the hand doesn't move.

She starts dating again, a random boy with glasses and a smile too big for his face. She doesn't tell him about vampires and he doesn't die. They break up six months later, a casual conversation over coffee, and it doesn't hurt. Damon kisses her a night later. She pushes him away.

Tyler is watching her, Stefan's replacement, and she shrugs it off. Somewhere, far away, Stefan is running away, revenge and escape turned into one thing. He used to call her sometimes. He doesn't anymore. She gets used to it.

Klaus visits her six months after he killed his father, and the lines of anger on his face have been replaced with something different, something she doesn't care to name. She's done with vampires and their emotions, done with seeing something human in men that have wasted away in this world for hundreds of years.

"I want my family back," he tells her, standing in her kitchen, and she thinks of Jenna, thinks of her mother, and laughs.

He frowns.

"Sorry," she tells him and doesn't mean it. "I'm fresh out of sympathy for murdering fairytale monsters. Ask me again once you’ve found a time machine and brought Jenna back." She doesn't mention her mother; Isobel looked happy when she burned.

Klaus raises an eyebrow. "You're becoming more like Katherine."

Elena shrugs. "She survived you."

"She died for that."

She shrugs again, doesn't tell him how much that idea used to scare her, runs her tongue over teeth that are human and blunt, and tries not to think of Katherine's red smile. She isn't afraid of it anymore. But she's not keen on living forever.

The idea seems strangely bleak to her, a myth without its shine. When she's drunk, she thinks it's because she's not living much at all despite what she told Damon. Her life is on pause, waiting for the next disaster, and prolonging it seems like a waste of time. 

She doesn't know how to go on when all she ever gets are stop signs and dead ends.

Klaus asks for her blood before he leaves and she gives it to him. She's tired of fighting and there are still people she can lose. She watches as he carries blood bags out of the hospital room, she smiles at the compelled nurse. He drives her home in her own car. 

"Wouldn't want you to crash and die," he says, and she swallows her answer. 

When she looks out of her window at night, Tyler is sitting in a car parked in front of the house. She waves at him. He waves back. When she turns, Damon is standing in her room. She doesn't even flinch.

"He's a creep," he says, nodding at the window.

"Says the vampire creeping into my room at night," she replies without heat. She lets him sleep in her bed. When she wakes up, he's gone. She thinks she should feel lonely. But she doesn't.

Tyler doesn't comment when she gets into his car, just drives to school, and she watches the town pass them by. "You and Caroline," she begins after a while. He shakes his head. "Yeah, I thought so." They part ways at school without a goodbye and when Caroline comes to meet her, Elena doesn't mention Tyler.

He drives her home. She thinks of Klaus, imagines briefly a vampire getting his driving license. For some reason it makes her laugh. Tyler looks at her oddly. She doesn't explain.

"Does he contact you sometimes?" she asks him when he stops in front of her house. He shakes his head. She gets out of the car and walks away.

"Does he still call you?" she asks Damon in the evening. 

Damon nods. She thinks it should hurt, his absence in her life mirrored by his presence in Damon's. It doesn't. "He's still running," Damon says.

"Klaus will find him."

"Maybe. But he didn't find Katherine for a very long time."

The comment makes her laugh. "Stefan isn't Katherine."

Damon shrugs at that, looks away. "He survived a lot." He doesn't stay the night. She didn't expect him to.

Days pass her by. She watches Tyler, she laughs with Bonnie and Caroline. It's easy because it isn't real, because she is throwing herself into a pose and life is following her example. Somewhere, Stefan is still running. Somewhere, Klaus is still hunting him, creating an army on the way. It makes her think of packs and Jack London novels, of woods and monsters in the night.

She calls him one night, his number in her phone since his last visit when he programmed it in with a smirk. He answers after the fifth ring, his "Hello darling" crawling over her spine. She's drunk.

"Can werewolves and wolves mate?" she asks. He disconnects the line. She laughs into the darkness.

When he comes into town weeks later, she's grinning at him, leaning into the doorway. "You didn't answer my question." He pushes past her, solid and hard, and it makes her think of Stefan when he was angry and bitter and not hers anymore. She turns and follows him. "Vampires and humans have sex and vampires are dead. So that is actually pretty disgusting if you think about it. So how does it look from the furry side of things that go bump in the night?"

He narrows his eyes at her, and she smiles. "Do you want to die? Are you trying to goad me into killing you?"

She shrugs. "Not particularly."

He raises an eyebrow.

"You're not going to kill me. Not until you have your army." She shrugs. "Not until you got your family back. There's not much you can use to pressure Stefan with. So it might take a while before you get around to killing me."

He smirks. Steps closer. "There are other things I could do with you."

She doesn't move away. Wonders when she stopped being scared. Thinks that Stefan took more with him than a few bodies, thinks that maybe something inside of her broke after all.

Thinks she lost too much to still be alright, to be normal.

"Heard that one before," she says. 

Klaus laughs. "Yeah, you're definitely related to Katherina."

"She's running away from you."

He nods. "Because there is no reason for me to keep her alive."

When he leaves this time, he presses his hand against her cheek, dead heat feigning life and a caress. It startles her, her heartbeat stumbling out of rhythm, and it feels a bit like being alive.

There is so much death around her that she forgot how that feels.

Tyler is on watch again that night, the full moon hanging over his car, and she thinks that he must miss it sometimes, the need to turn, the pain of life. She thinks that Klaus might have missed it, the idea of it, centuries ago, and she laughs at herself for the thoughts.

She goes to bed thinking of Klaus and the way he touched her, thinks that she should dress up in red the next time he comes around. Maybe he'll hunt her, maybe he'll touch her again. Maybe she'll remember a time when life was more than just this, waiting for the next loss, for the next monster to crawl out from under her bed. She closes her eyes. 

And dreams of wolves.


End file.
